


Mistakes Were Made

by Wanderbird



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bonding, Escape from Hydra actually, Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Hydra (Marvel), Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Post-Avengers (2012), Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, a little bit of whump, hahah steve is gonna be so confused, knife bros!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29660817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderbird/pseuds/Wanderbird
Summary: Loki… may have made a mistake here.He’d been delighted, at first, through the endless fog of the Titan’s hold on him. SHIELD take custody of him, instead of Asgard? Oh, he’d grinned behind that irritating muzzle, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. But SHIELD weren't actually the ones in charge, and escape was proving harder than he first thought- nor was Loki the only prisoner whose mind was not entirely his own.One way or another, he will not stay for long.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Loki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Mistakes Were Made

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on a tumblr prompt I saw ages ago! :)
> 
> Now let the chaos begin.

Loki… may have made a mistake, here.  
He’d been delighted, at first, through the endless fog of the Titan’s hold on him. SHIELD take custody of him, instead of Asgard? Oh, he’d grinned behind that irritating muzzle, and laughed, and laughed, and _laughed._ It should have been perfect! Even if Thor did come back with permission to, what, wage war on all of Midgard for them, surely Loki would have managed to escape by then! Surely.

There were three problems with this:  
One, the group which had actually _acquired_ custody of him was not, in fact, SHIELD.  
Two, a solid three quarters of his magic was still being funneled away thanks to the Titan’s enchantment, and more with every day that passed  
Three, he was still here.

Locked in a cell, chained in the Asgardian anti-magic shackles Thor had left him in, with the damned muzzle on his face and an empty stomach. It had already been a _week._ Assuming he’d judged the time correctly, anyway, without any way to mark its passing. And while the shackles couldn’t do anything about his seidhr’s automatic work inside of him, busying itself with tasks like manifesting nutrition and liquid to keep his body running, they certainly did keep him from breaking out of so much as a paper bag. Not to mention that they couldn’t touch external enchantments, not if the continuing power drain was any indication. At this rate, Loki guessed he probably had about a month.  
One month.

To either get back to the Titan and hope he wasn’t punished too harshly for his failure, or get out from under His thumb entirely—preferably the second. Sure, the Titan had healed him from the fall, nursed him back to health, trained him, supplied him, and set him on the path to revenge. But He had also tried to control him, to manipulate him through the lens of the precious Mind Stone, not to mention through more mundane means. Loki had to give him points for trying. But the Mad Titan was no sorcerer, and Loki had hundreds of years more experience shaping the magic of the universe than the Order did, and was much more used to working with debatably-sentient magical artifacts than any of them. The instant the Mind Stone had touched his hand, it turned to him.

There were muffled footsteps at the door.

Loki snapped to attention instantly, then allowed himself to lean dazedly back against the wall. Most likely, whoever held him wanted to weaken him before attempting anything, unless they truly meant for him to rot in this cell until he died. Either way, it would likely be of benefit to appear weaker than he was. If he didn’t get a chance soon, Loki would have to start trying some truly drastic measures. He might be able to get out of the cuffs if he could just force his thumb out of the way.

Hinges creaked, and the footsteps drew nearer.  
Loki kept his head down, his mouth just barely open. He glanced up through his hair. Not worth trying to leave just yet, not with that full squad of gunmen in the hall and the cuffs still keeping his magic at bay.  
A gloved hand gripped his cheeks between thumb and forefinger, tilting his head up to face whoever it was. Loki made a show of quickening his breath a little, of focusing his eyes and then sliding away as if he hadn’t the strength to stay lucid.  
The soldier grunted. Loki couldn’t make out their features, beneath the mask and helmet they still wore, but they certainly were a soldier. And that emblem on their vest, where had he seen it before? Whatever it was, that memory was far too shrouded to recall, hidden beneath smoke and fire and all-consuming rage. Evidently there was still some kind of influence obscuring his thoughts. Not that he had any idea what that influence _was._

The soldier reached up to spread his eyelids, peering at his eyes. Pinched and released the skin of his neck. Hummed.  
Loki lolled sideways when they let him go, and the soldier let him drop to the floor. _Rude._

“We’re all set.” The soldier stood back a step. “The damn thing’s tougher than it looks, but I think it’s finally out of it enough to risk it. Move team, you ready?”  
“Ready.” 

And then the soldiers started _touching_ him, and it took herculean effort for Loki not to react, not to start breaking hands and summoning knives. One of the soldiers hauled him upright, while another covered his hands in great, uncomfortable mitts. Sensible, that. He couldn’t go around picking locks and poking people’s eyes out if his fingers were bound together. Once he was on his feet, they fixed some kind of hobble to his ankles and a pair of leads to the muzzle, like he was a horse that could be led by the nose wherever they wanted him to go.

They marched him out the door like that.  
Well. The soldiers marched. Loki shuffled, because that was his only option, and fell when they pushed him, and tried to keep feeling in control of the situation. Because he was. Absolutely. There was only one person in control here, and it wasn’t the soldiers. Even if he couldn’t walk faster than a frantic shuffle, or use his magic, or hold a knife. Or speak. His stomach churned.  
It killed him, especially not being able to speak. All he could think of was wire in his lips, blood in his mouth, burning on his back— _stop it,_ he growled internally. _Stop. We are on Midgard, and perfectly capable of dealing with any dangers which haunt it. And even if they manage to keep us here,_ Loki added, _we have survived worse._

The chamber they led him into at last was… ominous.  
Big and round and dark, with a raised concrete dais, and atop that—there stood a great chair, plainly the focal point of the entire room. That chair made his heart pound faster, and not in a good way. It was surrounded by monitors and hooked up to cables, for one thing, and that was rarely pleasant news. For another, it _reeked_ of fear and rage. But the part that truly struck him was the device at the top of the chair, like a steel and plastic halo of electronics, with two great spotlights staring uncompromising down.  
“Strap him down and prep him,” the lead soldier ordered. “Leave the cuffs as they are until it’s done. We don’t know what this thing is capable of.”  
“The electricity—” someone protested.  
“Nonconductive metal,” the leader shook his head. “The techs already tested it. Annoying for discipline, but we can keep them on during the process.”

That didn’t sound good, either. But these mortal’s plans were at least a partial success; he truly couldn’t use magic through these damned cuffs Thor had slapped on him, and these other restraints were clearly built for something of comparable strength to an Asgardian. His only weapons left were his mind and his tongue—and his tongue was muzzled for the time being.

Straps closed about his arms.  
Loki suppressed the immediate panic reaction, though he could not keep from flinching. He _had_ to keep pretending he was barely lucid. Waiting until he truly _was_ dying of hunger and thirst would not improve the situation in the least, and that was all that waiting could achieve. It wasn’t like anyone would be coming to his rescue; not Loki tossed-from-Asgard, Loki of Jotunheim, Loki of evil and lies.  
So he flailed, a little. But he did not struggle. And his restraints were left on, his elbows and legs fastened to the chair instead of his already-bound wrists, and the electronic halo lowered— and closed about his head.

Loki felt a flash of all-consuming dread.  
He tried to pitch forward, to lurch away from that awful _thing,_ but the restraints on the chair held him fast. He might have gained, what, a millimeter? If that? Stars above, he hadn’t expected humans to be able to immobilize him so well. A hand brushed his hair out of the way in a mockery of tenderness, and placed something wet and cool on his forehead.

And then the machinery kicked in.

And lots of things started happening at once.

* * *

Here, why don’t I explain? HYDRA certainly can’t, or they wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Maybe they would have had better luck if they’d bothered to look—or maybe not, because they’re nazis, and nazis always lose. 

Magic, like everything else, is a kind of science.

Of course it is. Science is the study of the laws of the universe, and magic doesn’t stop having laws just because we don’t always know them. But see, up to this point, there have only been four players on the battleground of Loki’s mind.

Picture this: A demigod strapped to a chair.  
Within them is magic, for they are a sorcerer of great skill and great power, and they draw energy from the world around them.  
Second, they are a god, connected to the Yggdrasil and all human belief.  
Third, imposed from outside there are cuffs of the Aesir, enchanted so that the wearer’s magic cannot pass.  
And finally is the enchantment from the Mad Titan’s second in command, the mage Ebony Maw, that steals power from a god and gives it to itself. Because it cloaks the stolen power in its own, this enchantment works as normal even through the cuffs; the Maw does not know the cuffs are there.

The board is set; now for the wrench that tumbles in the works:

HYDRA has a machine which wipes away identity.  
That’s what they say they have, at least. The real story there is long and complicated, filled with gruesome experiments and countless failures, and the whole bloody file sits in a desk drawer just a few meters away. But essentially, what it does is it manipulates energy: it goes into a human brain and applies _just_ the right amount of electricity in _just_ the right places as to completely wreck specific systems, with all the gleeful cruelty of a toddler playing Godzilla.

But Loki is not human.  
And magic is another kind of science.

Electricity lances through the equipment and crackles into Loki’s brain. It does its job, or starts to—but the systems it destroys do not do the same thing as they would in a human. What’s more, Loki is a mage. Like most mages, they have protections built in against other people poking around in their head, that kick in automatically; and magic is another kind of science.  
The cuffs keep energy inside him. It’s what they’re made to do, and if magic is energy then so is electricity, because magic is another kind of science.

Shortly after that, the Maw’s spell kicks in again, and bites out a piece of Loki’s energy—it always takes a proportion of the new magic inside him, and now there is suddenly quite a lot more energy to send. So the enchantment works as always, and far away the Maw screams with a sound like a dying pig. It takes almost a full minute for the Maw to realize what’s happening.  
This is fair enough.  
He just started receiving several _hundred_ volts of electrical energy alongside the magic he was actually _trying_ to steal, and that isn’t comfortable in the least. When he figures it out, he does the only thing he can think of:  
He cancels the spell.

He cancels all of them, every enchantment his magic contacts on Loki, because otherwise something else might maintain the link between them, and the Maw _does not like_ the feeling of pain. When he’s done screaming, he decides that Loki must be considered a lost cause.

But see, he cancelled _all_ the magic.  
You can guess where this is going.

The cuffs, exactly as designed, received a magical signal from outside their captive to stop doing their job. They obeyed.

And the power of the god chained to a chair roared up, and up, and _out._

* * *

The Asset saw the flash when it happened.  
There was the door, the door to the room it hated most, and liquid green light poured from its cracks. Not just poured—a moment later, the door itself flew off its hinges. Cold rushed in to fill the gap. The Asset knew its orders.  
 _Protect the base.  
_  
The Asset strode into that sickly mist. _Step one: identify the threat.  
_ That was not as easy as it should have been, thanks to the green fog coating the room. But as the Asset moved forward, its foot glanced off a pair of engraved cuffs.  
 _Patterns are unfamiliar. Origin unknown.  
_ Something moved. There sounded a guttural scream to the Asset’s left, so it turned and fired a shot before it could even make out the target’s silhouette. But that was the target, surely. The threat. It perched on Agent Telly’s chest like some strange bird, a blade shining in each fist as its victim staggered and fell, those two wicked knives impaled in the Agent’s shoulders.

 _Step two: neutralize the threat.  
_ The Asset raised its arm and fired again. It must have hit the target, it had to have hit the target, but that strange silhouette only jerked back a little. It turned to face the Asset.  
The target’s eyes tangled in the Asset’s mind like lightning, and the whole world went green.

* * *

The Asset—woke.  
It—no, he wasn’t an _it,_ he was a _he—_ hadn’t expected to wake. He certainly hadn’t expected to wake here, lying in the snow of a forest miles away from base. How did he… get here? The Asset could hear the faint rustlings of a person nearby, but his head pounded like a hurricane, and he wasn’t sure whether the person was friend or foe. He stayed still.

There was a _thump_ as something landed in the snow.  
“ _Finally!”_ a voice hissed. “Food.” The snow creaked, and the person sat down next to the Asset in a sprawl of limbs, seeming totally unconcerned by his presence. Taking the chewing sounds as a sign that his company was distracted, the Asset risked glancing at the stranger—green eyes stared back at him, wide with surprise. The stranger finished chewing and swallowing the massive hunk of burger in their mouth.  
“So,” they said at last. “You’re awake.” The stranger grinned a wide, somewhat hysterical smile. “Have some food! Surely you’re hungry. I know I could eat an entire goat, if only I could find one! But _no,_ instead I had to go and pull this thing out of my dimensional pocket instead—do you realize how long it’s been sitting there?”  
This was not how things should be. The Asset was starting to recognize this stranger. It was the threat from before, the one that filled the base with light, it had to be—but now it offered him food. No. It was a threat. A target. It had to—

“We aren’t in the base of your superiors anymore, you know.” The target cocked its head. It bent its legs and rolled into a crouch, again looking somehow birdlike with its knees up by its shoulders. “And I’m certainly not threatening anyone. In fact, I thought I broke you free of that compulsion when you were still asleep. You are to be _my_ minion now if you are to be anyone’s. In fact—” The target moved all of a sudden, plopping itself down on the Asset’s legs and leaning over him with its spidery, bloodstained hands on his shoulders. Filthy black hair dripped from the sides of its face as it grinned. “No-one else is _ever_ going to tamper uninvited with your mind again.”

The world sort of… faded out again.

It wasn’t painful, exactly, the presence in his head. Nor was it pleasant. It slashed at the Asset’s brain, ripping away swathes of _something_ that he couldn’t quite make out. But when those pieces were gone, the Asset felt himself relax a little, for the first time he could remember. Maybe there wasn’t a threat here, after all.

Then the presence in his mind started building something.  
It was much lighter, this new structure in his mind. It did not force him into total alertness, always ready to launch himself into action or obedience. It didn’t do anything that he could tell. But it was green, and gold, and intimate, a delicate lattice that seemed to hum all through his brain.

A gasp escaped him.

Then the world returned, and the Asset lunged.  
_“What the hell did you just do to me?!”_ He toppled the stranger backward into the snow, wrapping his hands around their throat. The figure struggled in his grasp stronger than any human could have, hard enough to make grappling them a challenge—but still, the Asset managed to keep on top, slamming them down with gravity on his side.  
The stranger looked stunned for a few brief seconds, before they gave a wheezing sort of cackle.  
“You’re a strong one, aren’t you?” they exclaimed. They panted and squirmed fruitlessly in his grip, grinning like some wild animal again. There was blood on their teeth. “I did exactly what I said I would. Your mind’s your own again. You’re welcome!”

“What are you talking about?” The Asset frowned. The stranger seemed unusually resistant to lack of oxygen. Their face wasn’t even turning red yet. _Irregular._

“I suppose it’s not _quite_ your own. You’re still missing quite a lot in there, you know, but I can’t bring back everything that was lost. I’m not a healer. I can’t even fix everything wrong with my _own_ head, if all these holes in my memory are anything to judge by.” The stranger shrugged as best they could, though their arms remained pinned and their expression was positively carnivorous. “Still, it should be enough you don’t need to serve those loathsome idiots anymore. Now let go of me. I tire of this game.”

The Asset—released them.  
“Wonderful.” The stranger sat up, abruptly. “I am Loki, god of chaos and lies. Who are you? Do you even remember?” They tried to stand, but their legs buckled beneath them, leaving them lying face-down in the snow. After a few seconds, they rolled over, and let out a hysterical giggle that trailed off into dull blankness.

The Asset blinked, slowly. “I don’t remember,” he said at last. “I am the Winter Soldier.”

The stranger stared at them in plain astonishment. And then, all at once, their head tilted back and they cackled with a sound like shattered glass. “The _Winter Soldier?_ That’s adorable!” As suddenly as it began, the laughter stopped. Loki snapped their head back down. Their expression now was so intense it made the Asset nervous to see, their fingers digging into the snow as if they didn’t even notice the cold. “Trust me, Soldier, you creatures know _nothing_ of winter.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> There will definitely be more of this eventually, but I don't have a buffer or a schedule, so it'll probably be awhile. :)  
> Have fun!


End file.
